1

à INTRODUCTION Ã

MADE, NOT BORN

WHO FIRS T IMAGINED the concepts of robots, automata, human en-hancements, and Arti�cial Intelligence? Historians tend to trace the idea of the automaton back to the medieval cra�smen who developed self- moving machines. But if we cast our nets back even further, more than two thousand years ago in fact, we will �nd a remarkable set of ideas and imaginings that arose in mythology, stories that envisioned ways of imi-tating, augmenting, and surpassing natural life by means of what might be termed biotechne, “life through cra�.” In other words, we can discover the earliest inklings of what we now call biotechnology.

Long before the clockwork contraptions of the Middle Ages and the automata of early modern Europe, and even centuries before techno-logical innovations of the Hellenistic period made sophisticated self- moving devices feasible, ideas about making arti�cial life— and qualms about replicating nature— were explored in Greek myths. Beings that were “made, not born” appeared in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, the bronze robot Talos, the techno- witch Medea, the genius cra�sman Daedalus, the �re- bringer Prometheus, and Pandora, the evil fembot created by Hephaestus, the god of invention. �e myths represent the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create arti�cial life. �ese ancient “science �ctions” show how the power of imagination allowed people, from the time of Homer to Aristotle’s day, to ponder how replicas of nature might be cra�ed. Ideas about creating arti�cial life were think-able long before technology made such enterprises possible. �e myths reinforce the notion that imagination is the spirit that unites myth and science. Notably, many of the automata and mechanical devices actually designed and fabricated in Greco- Roman antiquity recapitulate myths by illustrating and/or alluding to gods and heroes.

2 � � � �� ��� � ���

Historians of science commonly believe that ancient myths about arti�cial life only describe inert matter brought alive by a god’s com-mand or magician’s spell. Such tales certainly exist in many cultures’ mythologies. Famous examples include Adam and Eve in the Old Tes-tament and Pygmalion’s statue of Galatea in classical Greek myth. But many of the self- moving devices and automata described in the mythical traditions of Greece and Rome— and in comparable lore of ancient India and China— di�er in signi�cant ways from things animated by magic or divine �at. �ese special arti�cial beings were thought of as manufac-tured products of technology, designed and constructed from scratch using the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools, artworks, buildings, and statues. To be sure, the robots, replicants, and self- propelled objects described in myth are wondrous— marvelous beyond anything fashioned on earth by ordinary mortals— be�tting the sublime abilities of gods and legendary inventors like Daedalus. One might consider the myths about arti�cial life as cultural dreams, ancient thought experiments, “what- if ” scenarios set in an alternate world of possibilities, an imaginary space where technology was advanced to prodigious degrees.

�e common denominator of mythic automata that took the forms of animals or androids like Talos and Pandora is that they were “made, not born.” In antiquity, the great heroes, monsters, and even the immortal Olympian gods of myth were the opposite: they were all, like ordinary mortals, “born, not made.” �is distinction was a key concept in early Christian dogma too, with orthodox creeds a�rming that Jesus was “be-gotten, not made.” �e theme arises in modern science �ction as well, as in the 2�17 �lm Blade Runner 2049, whose plot turns on whether certain char-acters are replicants, facsimiles of real humans, or biologically conceived and born humans. Since archaic times, the di�erence between biological birth and manufactured origin marks the border between human and nonhuman, natural and unnatural. Indeed, in the stories of arti�cial life gathered here, the descriptive category made, not born is a crucial distinc-tion. It separates automata described as fabricated with tools from lifeless objects that were simply enlivened by command or magic.

Two gods— the divine smith Hephaestus and the Titan Prometheus— and a pair of earthbound innovators— Medea and Daedalus— were in-volved in Greek, Etruscan, and Roman tales of arti�cial life. �ese four

� � �� , � � � � �� � �

�gures possess superhuman ingenuity, extraordinary creativity, tech-nical virtuosity, and superb artistic skills. �e techniques, arts, cra�s, methods, and tools they employ parallel those known in real life, but the mythic inventors achieve spectacular results that exaggerate and surpass the abilities and technologies available to mere mortals in the quotidian world.

With a few exceptions, in the myths as they have survived from antiq-uity, the inner workings and power sources of automata are not described but le� to our imagination. In e�ect, this nontransparency renders the divinely cra�ed contrivances analogous to what we call “black box” technology, machines whose interior workings are mysterious. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum comes to mind: the more advanced the tech-nology, the more it seems like magic. Ironically, in modern technoculture, most people are at a loss to explain how the appliances of their daily life, from smartphones and laptops to automobiles, actually work, not to mention nuclear submarines or rockets. We know these are manufac-tured artifacts, designed by ingenious inventors and assembled in facto-ries, but they might as well be magic. It is o�en remarked that human intelligence itself is a kind of black box. And we are now entering a new level of pervasive black box technology: machine learning soon will allow Arti�cial Intelligence entities to amass, select, and interpret massive sets of data to make decisions and act on their own, with no human oversight or understanding of the processes. Not only will the users of AI be in the dark, but even the makers will be ignorant of the secret workings of their own creations. In a way, we will come full circle to the earliest myths about awesome, inscrutable arti�cial life and biotechne.

Finding felicitous and apt language to describe the range of automata and nonnatural beings designated in ancient mythology as made, not born is daunting. �e magical and the mechanical o�en overlap in stories of arti�cial life that were expressed in mythic language. Even today, his-torians of science and technology acknowledge that robot, automaton, cyborg, android, and the like are slippery terms with no �xed de�nitions. I tend to use informal, conventional understandings for android, robot, automaton, puppet, AI, machine, cyborg, and so on, but for clarity, tech-nical de�nitions are given in the text, the endnotes, and the glossary.

�is book surveys the wide range of forms of arti�cial life in mythology, which includes tales of quests for longevity and immortality, superhuman

4 � � � �� ��� � ���

powers borrowed from gods and animals, as well as automata and lifelike replicants endowed with motion and mind. Although the focus is on the Mediterranean world, I have included some accounts from ancient India and China as well. Even though the examples of animated statues, self- moving objects, and simulacra of nature imagined in myths, legends, and other ancient accounts are not exactly machines, robots, or AI in the modern sense, I believe that the stories collected here are “good to think with,” tracing the nascent concepts and imaginings about arti�cial life that preceded technological actualities.

It is important to avoid projecting modern notions of mechanics and technology onto antiquity, especially in view of the fragmentary nature of the ancient corpus about arti�cial life. �is book is not intended to suggest direct lines of in�uence from myth or ancient history to mod-ern technology, although resonances with modern science are noted. Here and there, I point out similar themes in modern mythologies of �ction, �lm, and popular culture, and I draw parallels to scienti�c history to help illuminate the natural knowledge and prescience embedded in mythic material. Along the way, the age- old stories, some very familiar and others long forgotten, raise questions of free will, slavery, the origins of evil, man’s limits, and what it means to be human. As the evil robot Tik- Tok in John Sladek’s 19�� science- �ction novel remarks, the very idea of an automaton leads one into “deep philosophical waters,” pos-ing questions of existence, thought, creativity, perception, and reality. In the rich trove of tales from the ancient mythic imagination, one can discern the earliest traces of the awareness that manipulating nature and replicating life might unleash a swarm of ethical and practical dilemmas, further explored in the epilogue.

So much of antiquity’s literary and artistic treasure has been lost over the millennia, and much of what we have is incomplete and isolated from its original contexts. It is di�cult to grasp just how much of ancient litera-ture and art has vanished. �e writings— poems, epics, treatises, histories, and other texts— that survive are but a tiny slice compared to the wealth that once existed. �ousands of artistic works have come down to us, but this is a small percentage of the millions that were created. Some art historians suggest that we have only about 1 percent of the Greek vase paintings ever made. And the modicum of literature and art that remains is o�en randomly preserved.

� � �� , � � � � �� � 5

�ese cruel facts of loss and capricious preservation make what we do have that much more precious. �ey also determine one’s approach and path of discovery and interpretation. In a study like this, we can analyze only what has managed to persist over millennia, as if we are following a bread- crumb trail in a deep, dark wood. And the birds have eaten most of the crumbs. Another analogy for what has perished and what sur-vived derives from the nature of devastating wild�res cutting paths of destruction, driven by winds across a landscape of grass and trees. What remains a�er terrible �res is what foresters call a “mosaic e�ect”: wide swaths of burned regions punctuated by patches of �owery meadows and copses of still- green trees. �e random ravages of the millennia on Greek and Roman literature and art related to arti�cial life have le� a patchwork dominated by blackened, empty spaces dotted here and there with vital passages and pictures from antiquity. Such a mosaic pattern necessitates a wandering path between evergreen oases, fortuitously pre-served and elaborated over thousands of years. Following that path, we may to try to imagine the original cultural landscape. A similar approach, “mosaic theory,” is also used by intelligence analysts to try to compose a big picture by amassing small bits of information. For this book I have gathered every text and scrap of ancient poetry, myth, history, art, and philosophy related to arti�cial life that I have been able to �nd— and enough compelling evidence emerges to suggest that people of antiquity were fascinated, even obsessed, with tales of arti�cially creating life and augmenting natural powers.

�is is all by way of saying that readers should not expect to �nd a sim-ple linear route in these chapters. Instead, like �eseus following a thread to navigate the Labyrinth designed by Daedalus— and like Daedalus’s little ant making its way through a convoluted seashell to its reward of honey— we follow a meandering, backtracking, twisting thread of stories and images to try to understand how ancient cultures thought about arti�cial life. �ere is a narrative arc across the chapters, but the story lines are layered and braided, as we travel along what Arti�cial Intelli-gence futurist George Zarkadakis calls the “great river network of mythic narratives with all its tributaries, crisscrossing and circling back” to fa-miliar characters and stories, and accumulating new insights as we go.

It may come as a relief to some, a�er wending our way through the vast memory palace of myth, that the �nal chapter turns to real, historical

6 � � � �� ��� � ���

chronology of inventors and technological innovations in classical antiq-uity. �is historical chapter culminates in the proliferation of self- moving devices and automata in the Hellenistic era, centered in that ultimate space of imagination and invention, Alexandria, Egypt.

Together these stories, both mythical and real, reveal the surprisingly deep roots of the quest for life that is made, not born. Let us join that quest.

7

à CHAPTER 1 Ã

THE ROBOT AND THE WITCHTALOS AND MEDEA

THE F IRST “ROBO T” to walk the earth— in ancient Greek mythology— was a bronze giant called Talos.

Talos was an animated statue that guarded the island of Crete, one of three wondrous gi�s fashioned by Hephaestus, god of the forge and patron of invention and technology. �ese marvels were commissioned by Zeus, for his son, Minos, the legendary �rst king of Crete. �e other two gi�s were a golden quiver of drone- like arrows that never missed their mark and Laelaps, a golden hound that always caught its prey. �e bronze automaton Talos was charged with the task of defending Crete against pirates.�

Talos patrolled Minos’s kingdom by marching around the perimeter of the large island three times each day. As an animated metal machine in the form of a man, able to carry out complex human- like actions, Talos can be spoken of as an imagined android robot, an automaton “con-structed to move on its own.”� Designed and built by Hephaestus to repel in vasions, Talos was “programmed” to spot strangers and pick up and hurl boulders to sink any foreign vessels that approached Crete’s shores. Talos possessed another capability too, modeled on a human trait. In close combat, the mechanical giant could perform a ghastly perversion of the universal gesture of human warmth, the embrace. With the ability to heat his bronze body red- hot, Talos would hug victims to his chest and roast them alive.

�e automaton’s most memorable appearance in mythology occurs near the end of the Argonautica, the epic poem by Apollonius of Rhodes describing the adventures of the Greek hero Jason and the Argonauts

� � � � � � � � 1

and their quest for the Golden Fleece. Today the Talos episode is familiar to many thanks to the un-forgettable stop- motion animation of the bronze robot created by Ray Harryhausen for the cult �lm Jason and the Argonauts (196�; �g. 1.1 is a bronze cast of the original model).�

When he composed his epic poem Argonautica in the third century BC, Apollonius drew on much older oral and written ver-sions of the myths of Jason, Medea, and Talos, stories that were already well known to his audience. An an-tiquarian writing in a deliberately archaic style, at one point Apol-lonius casts Talos as a survivor or relict from the “Age of Bronze Men.” �is was an ornate allusion to a conceit in a �gurative passage about the deep past taken from the poet Hesiod’s Works and Days (75�– 65� BC).� In the Argonautica and other versions of the myth,

however, Talos was described as a technological production, envisioned as a bronze automaton constructed by Hephaestus and placed on Crete to do a job. Talos’s abilities were powered by an internal system of di-vine ichor, the “blood” of the immortal gods. �is raises questions: Was Talos immortal? Was he a soulless machine or a sentient being? �ese uncertainties would prove crucial to the Argonauts, although the answers remain ambiguous.

à à Ã

In the �nal book of the Argonautica, Jason and the Argonauts are home-ward bound with the precious Golden Fleece. But their ship, the Argo, has been becalmed. With no winds to �ll their sails, exhausted from days

���. 1.1. Talos, bronze cast of the crumbling original model made by Ray Harryhausen for the �lm Jason and the Argonauts (196�), forged 2�14 by Simon Fearnhamm, Raven Armoury, Dunmow Road, �axted, Essex, England.

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 9

of rowing, the Argonauts make their way into a sheltered bay between two high cli�s on Crete. Immediately Talos spots them. �e great bronze warrior begins breaking o� rocks from the cli� and heaves them at the ship. How could the Argonauts escape the clutches of this monstrous android? Quaking in fear, the sailors desperately attempt to �ee the ter-rifying colossus astride the rocky harbor.

It is the sorceress Medea who comes to their rescue.A beautiful princess from the kingdom of Colchis on the Black Sea,

the land of the Golden Fleece, Medea was a bewitching femme fatale with her own set of mythic adventures. She possessed the keys to youth and age, life and death. She could hypnotize man and beast, and she could cast spells and brew powerful potions. Medea understood how to defend against �ames, and she knew the secrets of the unquenchable “liquid �re” known as “Medea’s oil,” a reference to volatile naphtha from natu-ral petroleum wells around the Caspian Sea. In Seneca’s tragedy Medea (lines �2�– ��, written in the �rst century AD), the sorceress keeps this “magical �re” in an airtight golden casket and claims that the �re- bringer Prometheus himself taught her how to store its powers.�

Before their landfall in Crete, Medea had already helped Jason on his expedition to win the Golden Fleece. Medea’s father, King Aeetes, prom-ised to give Jason the Fleece if he could complete an impossible, deadly task. Aeetes owned a pair of hulking bronze bulls created by Hephaestus. Aeetes ordered Jason to yoke the �re- breathing bronze beasts and plow a �eld while sowing the earth with dragon’s teeth that would sprout an instant army of android soldiers. Medea decided to save the handsome hero from certain death, and she and Jason became lovers (for the full story of how Jason dealt with the robo- bulls and the dragon- teeth army, see chapter 4).�

�e lovers had to �ee the enraged King Aeetes. Medea— whose own golden chariot was drawn by a pair of tame dragons— guided Jason to the lair of the dreadful dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece. With her shrewd psychological insight, powerful pharmaka (drugs), and technai (devices), Medea overcame the dragon.� Murmuring incantations, dip-ping into her store of exotic herbs and rare substances gathered from remote crags and meadows high in the Caucasus Mountains, Medea lulled the dragon into a deep sleep and seized the Golden Fleece for Jason. Medea and Jason absconded with the prize to the Argo, and she accom-panied the Argonauts on their homeward voyage.

1� � � � � � � � 1

Now, facing the threat of the looming bronze automaton blocking their way, Medea takes charge again. Wait! she commands Jason’s fear-ful sailors. Talos’s body may be bronze, but we don’t know whether he is immortal. I think I can defeat him.

Medea (from medeia, ”cunning,” related to medos, ”plan, devise”) prepares to destroy Talos. In the Argonautica, Medea uses mind control and her special knowledge of the robot’s physiology. She knows that the blacksmith god Hephaestus constructed Talos with a single internal artery or tube through which ichor, the ethereal life- �uid of the gods, pulsed from his head to his feet. Talos’s biomimetic “vivisystem” was sealed by a bronze nail or bolt at his ankle. Medea realizes that the robot’s ankle is his point of physical vulnerability.8

Apollonius describes Jason and the Argonauts standing back in awe, to watch the epic duel between the powerful witch and the terrible robot. Muttering mystical words to summon malevolent spirits, gnashing her teeth with fury, Medea �xes her penetrating gaze on Talos’s eyes. �e witch beams a kind of baleful “telepathy” that disorients the giant. Talos stumbles as he picks up another boulder to throw. A sharp rock nicks his ankle, opening the robot’s single vein. As his life force bleeds away “like melted lead,” Talos sways like a great pine tree chopped at the base of its trunk. With a thunderous crash, the mighty bronze giant topples onto the beach.

It is interesting to speculate about this death scene of Talos as it was depicted in the Argonautica. Was the vivid image in�uenced by the sen-sational collapse of a real monumental bronze statue? Scholars have sug-gested that Apollonius, who spent time in Rhodes, had in mind the magnif-icent Colossus of Rhodes, built in 2�� BC with sophisticated engineering techniques involving a complex internal structure and external bronze cladding. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it stood about 1�� feet tall, roughly the size of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Unlike the mythical Talos, who spent his days in constant motion, the immense �gure of Helios (“Sun”) did not have moving parts but served as a lighthouse and gateway to the island. �e Colossus was demolished by a powerful earthquake during Apollonius’s lifetime, in 226 BC. �e massive bronze statue broke o� at the knees and crashed into the sea.�

Other models were also at hand. Apollonius was writing in the third century BC, when an array of self- moving machines and automata were

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 11

being made and displayed in Alexandria, Egypt, a lively center for en-gineering innovations. A native of Alexandria, Apollodorus served as head of the great library there (P. Oxy. 12.41). Apollodorus’s descriptions of the automaton Talos (and a drone- like eagle, chapter 6) suggest his familiarity with Alexandria’s famous automated statues and mechanical devices (chapter 9).

à à Ã

In older versions of the Talos story, technology and psychology are even more prominent— and ambiguous. Does his metallurgic origin make Talos completely inhuman? Notably, the question of whether Talos has agency or feelings is never fully resolved in the myths. Even though he was “made, not born,” Talos seems somehow tragically human, even heroic, cut down by a ruse while carrying out his assigned duties. In the other, more complex descriptions of his downfall, Medea subdues the bronze giant with her spellbinding pharmaka, then uses her powers of suggestion, compelling Talos to hallucinate a nightmare vision of his own violent death. Next, Medea plays on the automaton’s “emotions.” In these versions, Talos is portrayed as susceptible to human fears and hopes, with a kind of volition and intelligence. Medea convinces Talos that she can make him immortal— but only by removing the bronze rivet in his ankle. Talos agrees. When this essential seal on his ankle is dislodged, the ichor �ows out like molten lead, and his “life” ebbs away.

For readers today, the robot’s slow demise might call to mind the iconic scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (196�). As the doomed computer HAL’s memory banks fade and blink out, HAL be-gins to recite the story of his “birth.” But HAL was made, not born, and his “birth” is a �ction implanted by his manufacturers, much as eidetic, emotional memories are manufactured and implanted in the replicants in the Blade Runner �lms (19�2, 2�17). Recent studies in human- robot interactions show that people tend to anthropomorphize robots and Arti�cial Intelligence if the entities “act like” humans and have a name and a personal “story.” Robots are not sentient, and have no subjective feelings, yet we endow self- moving objects that mimic human behavior with emotions and the ability to su�er, and we feel pangs of empathy for them when they are damaged or destroyed. In the �lm Jason and

12 � � � � � � � 1

the Argonauts, despite the expressionless face of the monolithic bronze automaton, Harryhausen’s astonishing animation sequence suggests glimmers of personality and intellect in Talos. In the poignant “death” scene, as his life- �uid bleeds out, the great robot struggles to breathe and gestures helplessly at his throat while his bronze body cracks and crumbles. �e modern audience feels pity for “the helpless giant and regrets that he was taken in unfairly” by Medea’s trick.�0

In the ��h century BC, Talos was featured in a Greek tragedy by Sophocles (497– 4�6 BC).�� Unfortunately, that play is lost, but it is easy to imagine that the fate of Talos might have evoked similar pathos in antiquity. One can appreciate how oral retellings and tragic dramas would have elicited compassion for Talos, especially since he behaved in a human- like way and his name and backstory were well known. Indeed, there is ample evidence that ancient vase painters humanized Talos in illustrations of his death.

à à Ã

We have only fragments of the many stories about the Cretan robot that circulated in antiquity, and some versions are lost to us. Illustrations on vases and coins help to �ll out the picture, and some artistic images of Talos contain details unknown in surviving literature. �e coins of the city of Phaistos, one of the three great Minoan cities of Bronze Age Crete, are an example. Phaistos commemorated King Minos’s bronze guardian Talos on silver coins from about �5� to 2�� BC. �e coins show a menac-ing Talos facing forward or in pro�le, hurling stones. No surviving ancient source says Talos had wings or �ew, but on the Phaistos coins Talos has wings. �e wings could be a symbolic motif that signaled his nonhuman status or they might suggest his superhuman speed as he circled the is-land (this would entail traveling more than 15� miles per hour by some calculations). On the reverse of some of the Phaistos coins Talos is ac-companied by the Golden Hound Laelaps, one of the three engineering marvels made by Hephaestus for King Minos. �e wonder- dog has its own body of ancient folklore (chapter 7).��

About two centuries before Apollonius wrote the Argonautica, Talos appeared on red- �gure Greek vase paintings of about 4�� to 4�� BC. �e details on some of the vases show that Talos’s internal “biostructure,”

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 1�

the ichor- �lled artery system sealed by a bolt at his ankle, was already a familiar part of the story as early as the ��h century BC. �e similarities and style of the scenes suggest that the vase paintings might be miniature copies of large public wall murals painted by Polygnotus and Mikon, renowned artists of Athens in the ��h century BC. �e ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias (�.11.�) tells us that Mikon painted episodes from the epic saga of Jason and the Golden Fleece in the Temple of Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri twins were honored in the Anakeion, chapter 2).

�ose murals admired by Pausanias in the second century AD are now lost, but surviving images on vases reveal how Talos was imagined in the classical era. �e artists show Talos as part machine, part human, whose destruction required technology. �e paintings also convey a sense of pathos in his destruction. For example, the dramatic scene on the extra ordinary “Talos vase,” a large wine vessel made in Athens in about 41�– 4�� BC, shows Medea mesmerizing the large man of bronze (�gs. 1.� and 1.4, plate 1).

Cradling her bowl of drugs, Medea gazes intently as Talos swoons into the arms of Castor and Pollux. In Greek myth, the Dioscuri twins had joined the Argonauts, but no surviving stories include them in the death of Talos, so this image points to a lost tale. �e Talos Painter depicts Talos with a robust metal body like that of a bronze statue; his torso looks

���. 1.2. Talos hurling stones on coins of Phaistos, Crete. Le�, silver stater, fourth century BC (reverse shows a bull). �eodora Wilbur Fund in memory of Zoe Wilbur, 65.1291. Right, Talos in pro�le, bronze coin, third century BC (reverse shows the Golden Hound). Gi� of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius C. Vermeule III, 199�.616. Photographs © 2�1� Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

���. 1.�. “Death of Talos,” �e metallic robot Talos swoons into the arms of Castor and Pollux, as Medea holds a bowl of drugs and gazes malevolently. Red- �gure volute krater, ��h century BC, by the Talos Painter, from Ruvo, Museo Jatta, Ruvo di Puglia, Album / Art Resource, NY.

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 15

like the realistic, heavily muscled bronze chest armor worn by Greek warriors (chapter 7, �g. 7.�). Employing the same technique used for images of warriors wearing bronze “muscle armor,” the artist painted Talos’s entire body yellowish- white to distinguish his bronze plating from human �esh. But despite his metallic form, Talos’s posture and his face are humanized to evoke empathy. One classical scholar even detects “a teardrop . . . falling from Talos’ right eye,” although this line might repre-sent metallic molding or seams, like the other reddish outlines de�ning the robot’s anatomy.��

An earlier (44�– 4�� BC) vase painting on an Attic krater found in southern Italy shows Talos as a tall bearded �gure reeling o� balance, again struggling against Castor and Pollux (�gs. 1.5, 1.6, plate 2). �is

���. 1.4 ������ 1�. “Death of Talos,” Ruvo vase detail. Album / Art Resource, NY.

���. 1.5 ������ 2�. Medea watches as Jason uses a tool to unseal the bolt in Talos’s ankle held by a small winged �gure of Death, as Talos collapses into the arms of Castor and Pollux. Red- �gure krater, 45�– 4�� BC, found at Montesarchio, Italy. “Cratere ra�gurante la morte di Talos,” Museo Archeologico del Sannio Caudino, Montesarchio, per gentile concessione del Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, fototeca del Polo Museale della Campania.

��� 1.6. Detail of the Montesarchio krater, showing Jason using a tool to remove the bolt in Talos’s ankle. Drawing by Michele Angel.

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 17

scene includes several striking details confirming the technological character of Talos’s vivisystem and destruction. We see Jason kneeling next to the robot’s right foot, applying a tool to the small round bolt on Talos’s ankle. Leaning over Jason, Medea is holding her bowl of drugs. A small winged �gure of �anatos (Death) grasps and steadies Talos’s foot. Death’s stance, posed on one foot with the other bent back, appears to replicate the death throes of Talos.

A similar scene showing the use of a tool appears on an Attic vase frag-ment of about 4�� BC found in Spina, an Etruscan port on the Adriatic Sea. Talos is again seized by Castor and Pollux. At Talos’s feet, Medea holds a box on her lap and a blade in her right hand, ready to remove the nail on his ankle. Another tiny winged �gure of Death points at Talos’s legs, heightening the suspense of the vignette.��

In the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, the bronze colossus was a dire obstacle to be vanquished. For King Minos of Crete, how-ever, Talos was a boon, an early warning system and frontline defense for his strong navy. Likewise, the Etruscans, dominant in northern Italy from about 7�� to 5�� BC, regarded the guardian Talos as a heroic �g-ure. Greek myths were favorite subjects for Etruscans, who imported shiploads of Attic vases decorated with familiar scenes and characters from mythology. �e Etruscans o�en gave the Hellenic stories a local spin, however, re�ected in their own artworks. Talos appears on several engraved Etruscan bronze mirrors of about 5��– 4�� BC, when Roman power was rising as a threat to Etruria.

An Etruscan mirror in the British Museum shows Talos, identi�ed by his Etruscan name, Chaluchasu. He is struggling with two Argonauts identi�ed, in Etruscan- language inscriptions, as Castor and Pollux. A woman leans down to open a small box while reaching out toward Talos’s lower leg (see the drawing in �g. 1.7). �e scene replicates the actions of Medea in the Athenian vase paintings, but the woman is labeled “Turan,” the Etruscan name for the goddess of love, Aphrodite, suggesting an alternative, unknown version of the Greek myth.

Other Etruscan bronze mirrors show a victorious Talos/Chaluchasu crushing his antagonists, perhaps re�ecting his ability to roast victims by hugging them to his heated chest (�g. 1.7). Scholars conclude that a local Italian tradition glori�ed Talos, emphasizing the bronze robot’s original purpose as the guardian of Crete’s shores. �e mirrors show that

���. 1.7. Top, Talos crushing Castor and Pollux to his chest, while a woman opens a box and reaches toward Talos’s ankle. Etruscan bronze mirror, about 46� BC, drawing, 1�59,���1.��. © �e Trustees of the British Museum. Bottom, Talos crushing two men, Etruscan bronze mirror, ��4�� Antikensammlung Staatliche Museen, Berlin, photo by Sailko (Francesko Bini), 2�14.

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 19

the Etruscans considered Talos/Chaluchasu as a positive heroic �gure whose “invincibility helped to overpower trespassers [and] strangers” at a time when Etruscans were facing Rome’s incursions into their territory.��

à à Ã

How ancient is the Talos tale? �at is uncertain; but, as we saw, Talos appears in art of the early ��h century BC. Stories about other animated statues and self- moving devices serving the gods on Mount Olympus are found in archaic oral traditions that were �rst set down in writing in about 75� BC in Homer’s Iliad, the epic poem about the legendary Trojan War set in the Bronze Age (ca. 115� BC).�� In classical antiquity, it was believed that King Minos of Crete had ruled three generations before the Trojan War. Renowned for his laws and for the strong navy he built to suppress piracy, Minos was treated as a “historical” ruler by the ��h- century BC historians Herodotus (�.122) and �ucydides (1.4) and later by Diodorus Siculus (4.6�.�), Plutarch (�eseus 16), and Pausanias (�.2.4), among oth-ers. Modern archaeologists named the Minoan civilization (����– 11�� BC) a�er the legendary King Minos.

Minoan- era seals from Crete depict many bizarre monsters and de-mons, which apparently served as guardians of cities and talismans. A bull- headed man, the Minotaur, appears on some Minoan seals. One Late Minoan seal stamp, known as the Master Impression (145�– 14�� BC), is quite striking. It shows a forti�ed city on a hill above a rocky seashore (matching the topography of Kastelli Hill, Kydonia, modern Chania, Crete, where the seal was discovered). A gigantic faceless male �gure, “unusually sturdy and strongly built,” looms atop the highest point of the city. �e enigmatic �gure does not represent Talos of Greek myth. But if this and similar seals circulated in the Greek world in antiquity, it is possible that a scene like this— a giant seemingly guarding a Minoan city— might have in�uenced early oral traditions about Talos defending Crete for King Minos. �at is speculation, of course, and in the absence of any literary texts the meaning of the scene on the Minoan seal remains a mystery.��

King Minos �gured in other ancient tales of technology associated with the legendary cra�sman Daedalus, whose works were sometimes con�ated with those of the inventor god Hephaestus (chapters 4 and 5). In

2� � � � � � � � 1

any event, it is clear that Talos, the bronze automaton of Crete, was well known in Greek poetry and artworks long before Apollonius of Rhodes wrote his Argonautica in the third century BC. Besides Pindar (Pythian 4, ca. 462 BC), Apollonius’s sources for Talos are unknown, but some scholars believe that the epic traditions about the Argo’s voyage are even older than the Trojan War stories.�8 So the tale of Talos could be very ancient indeed.

Talos appeared in the lost tragedy Daedalus by Sophocles in the ��h century BC. But the earliest written description of Talos is in a frag-ment of a poem by Simonides (556– 46� BC). Simonides calls Talos a phylax empsychos, an “animated guardian,” made by Hephaestus. No-tably, Simonides says that before taking up guard duties on Crete, the great bronze warrior had destroyed many men by crushing them in his burning embrace on Sardinia. Sardinia, the large island west of Italy, was renowned for copper, lead, and bronze metallurgy in antiquity. Sardinia

had long- standing ties to Crete dating back to the Bronze Age, and the Etruscans traded and settled in Sardinia as early as the ninth century BC.�� During the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia, which �ourished from about 95� to 7�� BC, smiths forged myriad bronze �gures using lost- wax cast-ing. Nuragic sculptors employed surprisingly sophisticated tools to create a phalanx of giant stone statues that stood watch on Sar-dinia (see also chapter 5). Ranging from 6.5 to � feet tall, the imposing stone �gures are concentrated at Mont’e Pramo on the west coast of the island. These remarkable Nuragic statues are the earliest anthropomorphic large sculptures in the Mediterranean region, a�er the colossi of Egypt.

���. 1.�. Ancient stone giant of Mont’e Prama, Sardinia, Nuragic culture, about 9��– 7�� BC. National Archaeological Museum, Cagliari, Sardinia.

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 21

�e enigmatic giants of Sardinia have distinctive faces: large concentric discs for eyes and small slits for mouths (�g. 1.�). It’s easy to see why these simple facial features are humorously likened to those of typical modern robots in popular science �ction, such as the droid C- �PO in the Star Wars �lms (1977– 2�17). Since 1974, archaeologists have unearthed forty- four of the great stone men at Mont’e Prama on Sardinia. �e giants are believed to have served as sacred guardians. If so, they would have ful�lled the same function as Talos and other border- protecting statues in antiquity.

Was the poet Pindar’s claim that the giant automaton Talos had once defended Sardinia somehow related to ancient Greek observations or reports of the towering stone giants of the island? Curiously enough, an island defended by boulder- hurling giants, the Laestrygonians, appears in Homer’s Odyssey (1�.�2, 2�.�1�). �e Laestrygonians’ name sounds similar to that of the Lestriconi, a tribe that inhabited northwest Sardinia. It has been suggested that the Homeric tale of the giants defending the island by throwing rocks could have arisen from sailors’ sightings of the colossal �gures on Sardinia.�0 �e similarity to the actions of Talos is striking.

à à Ã

Some modern historians of automata have misunderstood Talos as inert matter supernaturally instilled with life by the gods via magic. In his history of European automata, for example, Minsoo Kang divides the automata described in antiquity into four categories: (1) mythic creatures that re-semble modern robots only in appearance; (2) mythic objects of human manufacture brought to life with magic; (�) historical objects of human design; and (4) speculative automata in theoretical inquiries of moral con-cepts. Kang places Talos in his �rst category of “mythic creatures” that look like robots but were created by “supernatural power with no refer-ence to mechanical cra�.” �e “imaginary signi�cance” of automata like Talos “in the premodern period had little to do with mechanistic ideas,” asserts Kang, who claims that Talos was “not a mechanical being but very much a living creature.”�� But ancient sources describe Talos as “made, not born.” As we saw, Talos’s internal anatomy and movements were ex-plained through mechanistic concepts, and this was echoed in ancient ar-tistic depictions: What living creature has a metallic body and a nonblood circulatory system sealed with a bolt? Moreover, the mythic accounts and

22 � � � � � � � 1

��h- century BC artworks illustrating the destruction of Talos show that his demise required technology, speci�cally the removal of the bolt.

�e exact de�nition of the term robot is debatable, but the basic con-ditions are met by Talos: a self- moving android with a power source that provides energy, “programmed” to “sense” its surroundings and possess-ing a kind of “intelligence” or way of processing data to “decide” to inter-act with the environment to perform actions or tasks. Kang’s notion that ancient ideas about technology played no role in the Talos myth is based, �rst, on a faulty comparison to the divine creation of Adam from mud or clay in the Old Testament, and, second, on a cursory reading of the one passage in the Argonautica (4.16��– 42) referring to Talos as the last of a “race of bronze men,” the archaizing poetic trope mentioned above.��

Philosopher of science Sylvia Berryman maintains that the Olympian gods were not portrayed as using technology in Greek myths, and that devices made by Hephaestus were not animated by cra�. But Talos’s maker, Hephaestus, was the god of metallurgy, technology, and inven-tion, usually depicted at work with his tools, and his productions were imagined as designed and constructed with implements and cra�. In Berryman’s view, Talos cannot represent a “technologically produced working artifact” because he has no “physical means by which [he] is said to work.”�� But Talos is outstanding among mythic arti�cial beings because ancient writers and artists represented Talos as an automaton, a “self- mover,” a bronze statue animated by “an internal mechanism,” in this case the single tube or vessel containing a special �uid, a system that was described in biological, medical, and machine- like terms.

Classical historian Clara Bosak- Schroeder cautions, rightly, that we moderns must guard against “projecting our technological understand-ings onto the past.” She suggests that in similar fashion the Hellenistic Greeks might have projected their knowledge of innovations back onto their ancient myths. Following Kang and Berryman, Bosak- Schroeder assumes that all mythic examples of “automata were originally imagined as purely magical,” and states that “the advent of advanced mechanics later in antiquity . . . caused Greeks in the Hellenistic and Roman ages to reinterpret magical automata as mechanical.” But the argument that a form of “relative modernism” led the Greeks to retroject their current technology onto imaginary automata in their myths and legends does not apply in the case of Talos and other mythic examples of arti�cial life

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 2�

that were described as fabricated by Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, and other classical sources.�� As discussed in chapter 9, some historical self- moving devices appeared in the fourth century BC. Moreover, Talos’s features cannot be interpreted as backward projections from the Hellenistic era because, as we saw, even in the earliest versions of the myth and in art-works, Talos was already imagined as a construction, a “self- moving or self- sustaining manufactured object [that] mimicked a natural living form,” the typical de�nition of a robot.��

It seems that a more meaningful, nuanced approach to Talos and other animated statues of antiquity would recognize how “mythology blurs the distinction between technology and divine power.”�� �ere is a di�erence between stories of gods wishing or commanding inert matter to become alive, as in the biblical Adam and the myth of Pygmalion’s statue (chapter 6), and gods using superior forms of technology to construct arti�cial life, even if the inner workings are not described. As numerous scholars have pointed out, in myths about cra�ed beings like Talos, Pandora, and others, the arti�cial beings are seen as the products of divine artisanship, not just divine will. Indeed, “the mystical and technological approaches to making arti�cial life are not as distinct” as many believe, argues E. R. Truitt, a historian of medieval automata. Truitt explains that the promise of technologies such as metalworking “was precisely that it o�ered the possibility of surpassing” the ordinary limitations of human creations and ingenuity.��

In many of the ancient myths and legends presented in this book, ar-ti�cial beings are made of the same substances and by the same methods that human cra�speople use to make tools, instruments, weapons, stat-ues, buildings, devices, and artworks, but with marvelous results be�tting divine expertise. Talos and his ilk are examples of arti�cial beings created, not simply by magic spells or divine �at, as many historians and philos-ophers of science and technology have assumed, but by what ancient Greeks might have called biotechne, from bios “life” and techne, “cra�ed through art or science.”�8

Hephaestus, the smith god of invention, fabricated Talos in his heavenly foundry, which was imagined as resembling but far surpassing real bronze foundries on earth— with vastly superior technology, capable of producing “living” and self- moving machines (chapter 7). Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was the hardest, most durable man- made material

24 � � � � � � � 1

of the eponymous Bronze Age. In the subsequent Iron Age, arcane bronze and bronze- making technologies retained an aura of the supernatural among ordinary folk. In popular superstition, �gures made of bronze were believed to enchant or to ward o� evil. Bronze guardian statues were o�en placed at borders, boundaries, bridges, gates, and harbors.�� �e brazen forms of the mythical Talos of Crete and the historical Colossus of Rhodes might have been thought to exert a kind of magic- shield e�ect, but both were engineered with complex internal structures.

From antiquity into the Middle Ages, bronze was the favored ma-terial for making “living machines” and automata. Not only did bronze casting require “trade secrets,” esoteric knowledge and skills, but casting could reproduce human and animal forms in metal with a preternatural verisimilitude. �is may have led to early Greek smiths being “perceived as magicians,” notes Sandra Blakely in her history of metallurgy. But, Blakely continues, “to call an artisan a magician may simply be hyper-bolic praise of his technical skills,” especially in the case of “artifacts that seem to come alive.” In the lost- wax method of bronze casting, described below, the likeness of a person or animal can seem to appear by magic. As science- �ction futurist Arthur C. Clarke’s well- known �ird Law states: “Any su�ciently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” By creating an eerie imitation of a living thing, an inventive god— or human inventor— might also “seek to replicate the animation” of that thing.�0 In the logic of magical thinking, the bronze object’s uncanny replication of life suggests the notion that the simulacrum might also include self- movement and agency.��

Attributing magic to metallurgy could also re�ect technological mas-tery of natural science extrapolated to metalworking, remarks Blakely. According to ancient Greek legend, the discovery of the art of pouring molten metal into crucibles occurred a�er a forest �re on a mountain. �e “intense heat melted the ores hidden inside the earth,” and as the molten ores �owed down the mountain, they �lled cavities on the rocky surface, taking their exact forms.��

Contemplating the descriptions of Talos’s biotechnology— the single vessel running from his head to his feet secured with a seal— and the way that once the seal was opened, the ichor poured out like molten lead, classical scholar A. B. Cook proposed an intriguing theory drawing on ancient metallurgy. Cook suggested that the distinctive physiology of

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 25

Talos might have symbolized or alluded to lost- wax casting in the Bronze Age. Like other bronze �gurines and large bronze statues of antiquity, Talos himself would have been wrought by a lost- wax method.��

A �nely detailed early ��h- century BC red- �gure cup in Berlin, the Foundry Vase, illustrates artisans creating two lifelike bronze statues using foundry tools and techniques, including the sophisticated lost- wax method. �e statue of an athlete is in process, with parts of the body as yet unconnected (�g. 1.9, plate �; compare �gs 6.�– 11 for images of Prometheus constructing the �rst man in sections). On the other side of the vase, we see workers �nishing a larger- than- life, realistic statue of a warrior (�g. 1.1�).

�e ancient lost- wax technology is incompletely known, but one method involved making a rough clay model or a wooden armature, which was coated with beeswax. �en the �ner details were carved and molded in the wax by the sculptor. �is wax model was covered with a thin clay slip, followed by successively thicker layers to make a mold. �e

���. 1.9 ������ ��. Foundry scene, artisans making a realistic bronze statue of an athlete, in pieces, surrounded by blacksmith tools. Attic red- �gure kylix, from Vulci, about 49�– 4�� BC, by the Foundry Painter. Bpk Bildagentur / Photo by Johannes Laurentius / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Art Resource, NY.

26 � � � � � � � 1

core of the now- formless mass was pierced by a hollow bronze rod, from head to feet. �is tube allowed the melting wax to pour out of the feet when the form was placed in a �ery furnace. Molten bronze, with lead added for plasticity and to increase �ow, was next poured between the inner and outer molds where the wax had once been, to create the hollow statue. Notably, Talos heated his body by leaping into a �re, according to the poet Simonides, and his ichor �owed out at his feet.��

à à Ã

Magic and mysterious biomechanics obviously overlap in the myths about arti�cial life expressed in folklore terms. But in the various narra-tives about Talos, it is striking that the physiology of the bronze automa-ton was described in mytho- technical language, alluding to medical and scienti�c concepts current in antiquity.��

In the realm of myth, for example, the word ichor was used in a spe-cial sense for the “blood” of the gods. But in ancient medical and natural

���. 1.1�. Foundry scene, workers �nishing a statue of a warrior. Attic red- �gure kylix, from Vulci, about 49�– 4�� BC, by the Foundry Painter. Bpk Bildagentur / Photo by Johannes Laurentius / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Art Resource, NY.

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 27

science contexts, ichor denoted the watery, amber- colored blood serum of mammals. Moreover, in the Argonautica, the poet’s word for the vital vein that made up the bronze giant’s circulation system was a technical term for blood vessels in Greek medical treatises. �e imaginary inte-gration of living and nonliving components, melding biology with met-allurgical “mechanics,” makes Talos into a kind of ancient cyborg with biomechanical body parts.��

Talos, as an android constructed in Hephaestus’s divine foundry and animated by ichor, was presumably intended to be a perpetual- motion machine. In the myth Talos seems to evince inklings of consciousness and an “instinct” for survival, and he acquiesced to Medea’s persuasion, indicating agency and volition. But Talos is unaware of his origins and does not understand his own physiology. And indeed, how should his nature be understood? According to the lost play by Sophocles, Talos was “fated to perish.” And as Medea guessed, Talos was not immortal— even though ichor might have been believed to confer immortality. �e myth poses a conundrum: Was Talos a kind of demigod, a “man” encased in bronze, or an animated statue?

In Greek mythology, golden ichor instead of red blood circulated in the veins of gods because they were nourished by ambrosia and nectar, which made them ageless and immortal (see chapters � and 4 on attempts to appropriate these divine attributes for humans). Immortal gods and goddesses could receive super�cial injuries and lose a few drops of ichor without dying because their bodies quickly regenerated (Homer Iliad 5.�64– �2; cf. the fate of Prometheus, chapter �). Even though immortal ichor �owed in Talos, Medea reasoned that if she could cause his total exsanguination, he would perish.��

Remarkably, the location of the robot’s weak point was biologically determined. According to Hippocratic writings of 41�– 4�� BC on blood-letting procedures, the thick vein on the ankle was the site of choice for the deliberate bleeding of patients, a traditional therapeutic operation. Writing in about �45 BC, Aristotle cited the medical writer Polybus on the major human blood vessels running from the head to the ankle, where surgeons make incisions to drain blood. One characteristic of living crea-tures noted by Aristotle is that their blood must remain contained in vessels as long as they live; if enough blood is lost, they swoon, but if too much is lost, they die. As early as the ��h century BC, mythographers

2� � � � � � � � 1

and artists placed the nail that sealed Talos’s “blood vessel” at the most logical anatomical place, corresponding to the location of the human vein known to �ow most freely, so that when breached by Medea it would cause the robot to bleed out, as a human being would.�8

�e idea that Medea could destroy with the “evil eye” was an accepted notion in antiquity. According to the physical theories of some natural philosophers and other writers, certain malevolent people could send deadly rays from their eyes like psychic darts into other people, causing them harm, ill fortune, even death. Plutarch, for example, described the phenomenon as a “�ery beam” of malice emanating from an intense gaze. Medea’s eyes are described as dangerous to men throughout the Argo-nautica. With her evil eye, Medea transmitted hellish phantom images (deikela) into Talos’s being. Listening to the myth, people in antiquity would have visualized Talos’s eyes as looking quite lifelike, like those of Greek bronze statues they saw: such statues were painted realistically, and their eyes were inlaid with ivory, silver, marble, and gems, with �ne silver eyelashes.�� But the evil eye should a�ect only living things. �e idea of transmitting malevolent “rays” to disorient or destroy a machine raises the unsettling/unsettled question of Talos’s true nature. A guardian made of bronze was supposed to have magical protective power. Would a metal object with no feelings be susceptible to the evil eye? �at Medea could cast an evil- eye spell to disorient Talos is another indication that he was something more than an insentient metal machine.

à à Ã

�ousands of years before Hollywood’s movie RoboCop (19�7), about a cyborg police force, and the bionic assassins and bodyguards in the Terminator �lms (19�4– 2�15) and other science �ctions about cyborgs ca-pable of deploying lethal force, the ancient Greeks could imagine robotic guardians created by supertechnology that imitated nature, biotechne. Talos, like modern ideas of cyborgs, and like other ancient automata made by divine cra�, was envisioned as a hybrid of living and nonliving parts. Further, through myths like that of Talos, ancients could contem-plate whether an entity “made, not born” was simply a mindless machine or an autonomous, sentient intelligence. In the Talos myth, the sorceress Medea perceived the issues that have become themes in science �ction

� � � ��� � � � � � � � � � � �� � 29

from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1�1�) to Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 19�2) and Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2�17) to Her (Spike Jonze, 2�1�) and Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2�14). �e Talos myth was an early exploration of the idea that automata might come to desire to be real humans. As we saw, Medea intuited that, like a mortal being, Talos might fear his own death and long for immortality.

�e Talos story also showcases how the Greeks envisioned the engi-neering brilliance of Hephaestus, the divine smith, inventor, and tech-nician. �e myth demonstrates that at a very early date, people could conceive the idea of manufacturing a bronze android with encoded in-structions to carry out complex activities based on superhuman strength: Talos could recognize and track trespassers; he could �nd and pick up rocks, then aim and hurl the missiles from afar. He could also crush and burn enemies within reach. Most telling, Talos could be swayed by sug-gestion, revealing his hybrid living/nonliving nature, the uncanny “in- betweenness” that is a persistent hallmark of automata. �e Talos myth embodies age- old questions about what it is to be human and free.�0

Some of the questions raised by the Talos tale have not escaped mod-ern video game makers. For example, a philosophical narrative puzzle created in 2�14 plumbs conundrums of Arti�cial Intelligence (AI), free will, and “transhumanism,” the belief that advanced technology can enhance human physiology, psychology, and intelligence. �e game is called �e Talos Principle. A single player assumes the role of an AI robot that seems to have human- like consciousness and autonomy. Progressing through a complex world littered with classical ruins and relics of a lost modern dystopia, the player reacts to obstacles, clues, and choices to solve metaphysical dilemmas.��

More than twenty- �ve hundred years ago, the story of Talos set in motion ancient versions of the knotty questions about how to control automata, foreshadowing modern moral qualms that surround our robot- AI technologies. Some four hundred years ago, in 1596, poet Ed-mund Spenser employed a Talos- like �gure— a mechanical android he named Talus— to address ethical issues of robots in �e Faerie Queene. Can moral values be mechanized? Can machines understand justice or compassion? In Spenser’s allegorical epic poem, the automated squire made of iron was sent to help Sir Artegall, the righteous cavalier, in his quest to serve justice to villains. Invincible and relentless, the Iron Knight

�� � � � � � � � 1

Talus takes his job literally. Becom-ing an inflexible killing machine without mercy, Talus is a symbol of an inhumane, unbending form of justice, with no interest in wrong-doers’ extenuating circumstances, motives, or backstories. Concerns about whether automata can be “programmed” with ethical values (to be “artificial moral agents,” AMAs, in robotic literature today), or whether automata could have emotions or “intuitions,” arose in ancient and medieval myths long before sweeping advances in technology made the questions so urgent.��

It may seem desirable to have a security system that dispatches guardians or agents created by superior intelligence to automati-cally perform preordained duties

triggered by speci�c situations. But what if the situation shi�s or it be-comes necessary to interrupt the automatic response? How can humans control, disable, or destroy a powerful, unstoppable machine? How does one incapacitate an automated entity once set on track?

In the ancient myth of Talos, Medea’s duel with Talos turned on a twofold approach. Her knowledge of the robot’s internal system allowed her to exploit a physical �aw. She also perceived that the android might have evolved human- like “emotions,” such as a terror of termination. Armed with these two insights, Medea devised a trick and persuaded Talos to allow her to perform a technological- surgical operation on his body that would in fact annihilate him instead of ful�lling his innate drive or “wish” to go on forever.

�e destruction of Talos was not the only time the techno- wizard Medea would wield her knowledge of arti�cial life to destroy an enemy by promising to cheat death.

���. 1.11. Sir Artegall and his automaton squire, the Iron Knight Talus. Edmund Spenser, �e Faerie Queene (1596), wood engraving by Agnes Miller Parker, 195�.

TALOS IN THE MODERN WORLD

�e solitary conduit carrying the myste-rious force that animated Talos has been compared to an alternating electrical cur-rent. Bronze, being mostly copper, does have high electrical conductivity, but this fact was unknown in antiquity (although bronze colossi would have acted as light-ning rods). In 2�17, a writer for Popular Mechanics compared Talos’s ichor to the blue liquid that bleeds from imaginary hu-manoid robots in the popular television series HUMANS (their animating �uid is described as a “synthetic magneto hydro-dynamic conductant”). �e ancient image of Talos’s solitary conduit of mysterious ichor �uid may re�ect something akin to what cognitive scientists call “intuitive theories” of children and adults about physics and biology. Even among people today who understand that an electrical circuit requires two wires, a mental pic-ture persists of an empowering “juice” �owing through a single cable. Our “pre-scienti�c” intuitive vision co exists with modern scienti�c knowledge.��

In 195�, the author of a brief history of robots in Popular Electronics remarked on Talos’s “single ‘vein’ running from his neck to his ankle, stoppered somewhere in his foot by a large bronze pin.” Viewed in “modern terms,” the author mused, this conduit “could have been his main power cable and the pin his fuse.” Writing at the height of the Cold War, the author went on to declare that Talos was an ancient “Weapons Alert System and Guided Mis-sile in one package!”��

Notably, that same year, 195�, the larg-est surface- to- air guided missile became

operational. Fittingly, given Talos’s role as an automated adjunct of the superior Minoan navy, the new US naval weapon system was named Talos. When devel-opment began in 1947, the military plan-ners sought “an appropriate name.” �ey found it in �omas Bul�nch’s popular Age of Fable (1�55). According to the o�cial history of the missile, Talos “watched over and guarded the island of Crete. He was made of brass and was reputed to �y through the air at such terri�c speed that he became red hot. His method of dealing with his enemies was to clasp them tightly to his breast, turning them to cinders at once.” In this modern telling, Talos was airborne, recalling the winged images of Talos on the coins of Phaistos, and he was heated by intense friction, but these de-tails are not found in any Bul�nch edition or ancient text.

���. 1.12. Talos RIM- � missile, 195�s. US Army/Navy archives.

Talos was “approved as the name for the new ramjet missile” in 194�. �e Talos guided missiles patrolled the seas mounted on large naval carriers, ready to launch their warheads at enemies. Paral-leling the duties of the mythical bronze robot on Crete, the Talos missiles served as a frontline defense, with a range of two hundred miles and a speed of Mach 2.5 (almost 2,��� mph, twelve times the esti-mated speed of bronze Talos). Like Talos ceaselessly circling his territory, spotting and tracking invaders, and then lobbing rocks to destroy foes, the Talos defense system was automatically directed, but it was partly autonomous at closer range. �e Talos guided missiles “rode” a radar beam most of the way to the vicinity of the target but then homed in on the target “semiactively.”��

Modern military fascination with the myth of the great bronze robot continued. In 2�1�, inspired by the age- old science fiction of an invincible warrior made of the strongest materials and most ad-vanced technology, the US Special Oper-ations Command (SOCOM) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

(DARPA) initiated a project to create a futuristic, robotic exoskeleton suit of armor for special operations (special ops) soldiers, something akin to the weapon-ized suit worn by the superhero in the �lm Iron Man (2���). Human enhancement and augmenting mortal powers are very ancient ideas, as we’ll see in chapter �. �e idea for the high- tech armored suit arose from a commander’s desire to protect his men in unconventional battle situa-tions in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the Greek myth of Talos in mind, SOCOM devised the name Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit in order to render the acronym TALOS. The full- body form- �tting powered armor, intended to pro-vide super human strength, hypersensory awareness, and ballistic protection, in-cludes embedded computers, biosensors, enhanced vision and audio capabilities, solar panels, and features that capture ki-netic energy. �e plans for TALOS even call for an electronically activated “liquid body armor” system developed by MIT, which cannot help but recall the ichor of the immortal gods. As of this writing in 2�1�, TALOS is still unrealized.��

���. 1.1�. TALOS, Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, soldier’s exoskeleton uniform proposal, US SOCOM.